San Leandro Finance Committee Meeting: Development Impact Fee Update – June 11, 2025
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San Leandro Finance Committee Meeting: Development Impact Fee Update – June 11, 2025
Note on date discrepancy: The meeting minutes provided state the meeting occurred on Wednesday, May 28, 2025, while the user instruction specifies the meeting took place on June 11, 2025. This summary uses the June 11, 2025 date as instructed, but the discrepancy is noted.
The Finance Committee, consisting of Mayor Gonzalez and Councilmember Aguilar (Councilmember Viveros-Walton excused), met to discuss a comprehensive update to the city's development impact fees. The main presentation was delivered by Assistant Community Development Director Avalon Schultz, who outlined a proposed restructuring of the park impact fee, considerations for a new public art program, and a fee waiver program for affordable housing and ADUs. The committee provided direction to staff to move forward with the park fee update and explore the public art program, while expressing the need for further study on fee waivers and inclusionary housing requirements.
Discussion Items
- Development Impact Fee Presentation (Item 25-256):
- Assistant Community Development Director Avalon Schultz presented a detailed overview of the city's approach to updating development impact fees, emphasizing the balance between legally defensible fees and market feasibility.
- The city hired consultants NDS (for nexus study) and BAE Economics (for market feasibility). BAE analyzed 10 development prototypes and found that only for-sale townhomes are currently feasible in San Leandro. Market-rate multifamily and affordable multifamily face significant feasibility challenges, while office, retail, hotel, and medical office developments also struggle. Industrial development is marginally feasible.
- BAE recommended that total development impact fees not exceed 7–10% of total development costs; current fees are at 8–11%. The full legally defensible fees calculated by NDS would far exceed the market-feasible range.
- Over the past 10 years, 793 units were constructed (largely ADUs and affordable projects), and the city collected approximately $9.2 million in park fees.
- Staff recommended only revising the park impact fee at this time, not adding new fees for other facilities (library, fire, police, etc.), because market conditions are not supportive and because dividing fees into small, highly regulated pots would be less effective.
- Proposed park fee structure: tiered by square footage rather than a flat unit fee, with a 75-25 split between park improvements and land acquisition. This would reduce fees for smaller units (e.g., studios) and slightly increase fees for larger townhome units.
- A sample project of 500 mostly-studio units would see its park fee drop from $9 million (under current structure) to $2.5 million (under proposed structure).
- Staff also proposed exploring a public art program with an in-lieu fee option, and a fee waiver program: 100% waiver for nonprofit affordable housing, 50% for for-profit affordable and inclusionary units, and waiver of fees for ADUs over 750 sq ft (currently $7,833 park fee + $854 DFSI fee per ADU).
- Committee Discussion:
- Councilmember Aguilar asked whether the current fees are hindering development or if market conditions are the primary barrier. Schultz responded that market conditions are the main cause, but the fee updates could help at the margins, especially for affordable projects.
- Councilmember Aguilar expressed support for the public art program and the fee waiver program, but wanted to ensure the city demonstrates commitment to feasible development.
- Mayor Gonzalez raised concerns about long-term parkland acquisition, noting that the city needs to plan for future density. He questioned the dramatic reduction in fees for the 500-unit project and emphasized that the city should not be overly clever with thresholds.
- Mayor Gonzalez also questioned the impact of fee waivers, especially for affordable housing, because lower-income populations may use parks more intensively. He suggested that the state could cover those fees through grants. He also noted that ADU fees may not be a significant impediment, and that parking problems from ADUs should be considered.
- Both committee members agreed that the city should provide more context on comparator cities and the full picture of development costs (including inclusionary housing requirements, labor costs, etc.) before making final decisions.
- Councilmember Aguilar expressed concern about reducing the 15% inclusionary housing requirement, calling it a modern-day form of redlining. He wants to find a balance that encourages development while ensuring affordability.
- Staff clarified that the inclusionary housing requirement will be studied separately with a consultant over the next biennium.
Key Outcomes
- The committee accepted the report and provided direction to staff.
- Clear direction given: Proceed with updating the park impact fee as proposed (tiered structure, 75-25 split improvements vs. acquisition).
- Clear direction given: Explore and develop a public art program with an in-lieu fee option, to be vetted by the appropriate commission.
- No clear consensus on fee waivers: The committee was split on fee waivers for affordable housing and ADUs. Mayor Gonzalez expressed reservations, especially regarding park fee waivers for affordable housing. Councilmember Aguilar was more supportive. Staff will bring additional analysis and data to the full council.
- Future action: The item will be forwarded to the full City Council for consideration. Staff will include additional comparator cities and a broader discussion of the overall development cost picture, including the upcoming study of the inclusionary housing ordinance.
- No formal vote was taken; the committee provides recommendations to the City Council.
Meeting Transcript
Okay, let's go to the convenience. It is recording progress. We're going to call it the finance committee. The city of Celia. And that's not appreciated. Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember the Barrow Swalton is absent. Councilmember Agula. Thank you. And Mayor Gonzalez. Thank you. Okay. So the record reflects a talk about regular president as well. In case he wasn't liked. So if you would make your announcement, Madam Court. After each agenda item is presented, the mayor will ask for committee member comments and then take public comment. You will have two minutes for your comment. Okay, Captain Timer will appear for the convenience of the speaker and attendees. Okay, we're going to move to our discussion item. This is in regards to development impact fees. We've got assistant committee development director Allen Schultz presenting this item. Hello. Afternoon. Let's make sure you can see the presentation. Okay. And I hope that's not my two-minute timer because it definitely won't be. Okay, so we're here today to talk about development impact fees. We're going to go for the background and our approach to this topic, the different fee categories that were studied, the methodology we use to approach this item, a really important factor, which is market feasibility, and then some considerations as examples for the committee's review, and then we would love to get your feedback on this before it proceeds to council. And so the approach for this item is really a balancing act. We need to look at balancing between legally defensible fees and what's market feasible. And in doing that, we're looking to maximize revenue that can help fund necessary infrastructure while also enabling development to occur. And so to do this, we've had multiple consultants help us with this very technical topic, including NDS, who really worked on the next extended defensible fees, and then Bayer Economics who did the market feasibility assessment for San Leandro. And then this is an item that implements the housing element. The state requires that cities address the housing crisis by looking at issues that could prevent development, housing development in particular. And fees is an item that came up as a governmental constraint for San Leandro. So we pledge to look at our fees and to look at ways to incentivize all housing development and particularly affordable housing development for the state. And so the fee categories that we looked at include reevaluating our park development fee. That is the largest fee we charge residential development. And we also evaluated several new fee types given our major capital needs. So we know that we have aging facilities, we need to plan for new facilities, expanded facilities. So we looked at community and recreation centers, library facilities, fire protection facilities, police facilities, and general government, like City Hall and the Corporation Yard. And then we did not reevaluate our students and signals fees, uh, known as DFSI, which is charged to both residential and non-residential development. That fee will be studied once our streets plans are updated. And so we have an older streets document, and it wouldn't make sense to reevaluate those fees at this time. You can't look at your citywide needs and think like, great, we can charge new development to pay for these facilities or infrastructure that the existing residents need. That's not considered fair or legal. And so there has to be a nexus to the fees offsetting the impact that the new development itself creates proportionally. And so, in order to do this, we're really looking at the cost of our planned facilities that would serve new development, and then we're dividing that by our projected new development, which which would create the demand for those additional services facilities. And the existing what we call service levels for our existing community members, those are applied to the new development. So we're not we're not having status quo for our existing residents and then saying, oh, but we're gonna have you know the five-star version for the new developments, we're gonna charge them really high fees for that additional service level.
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